Why Your Partner Has a Love-Hate Relationship With Your Honesty

Avoidants — those who avoid self-reflection, who may lack self-awareness, are afraid of conflict and intimacy.

I’ve been in several relationships with emotionally withdrawn women.

This isn’t a gender issue, but the more avoidant they are, the more adept they are at dismissing their own feelings, emotions, expression, and growth.

If they’re doing that to themselves, you can damn well bet they’ll do the same to you.

And the real question is why are they like this? Why do they have a strange relationship with openness and honesty?

Is there anything you can do about it?

Before I get too deep into all this, I have a brief story.

My first partner was (as best as I can describe or interpret) a woman with dismissive avoidant relationship tendencies.

She wasn’t all that open and preferred avoiding relationship conflict or discussion. I had my issues, but why our relationship ultimately ended wasn’t necessarily the problems themselves, but how we handled them.

For her, it was just easier to leave than face conflict.

Before our real issues started, I came home one day and said, “I won’t be attending our wedding.”

I was so fed up with her emotional and physical neglect that I couldn’t fathom going through with this whole thing. I didn’t want to break up with her, but marriage was out of the question at that time.

Marrying her just felt wrong, but I was also a bit scared of marrying someone as distant as her.

Saying that was too blunt and direct; It was a huge shock to her.

But years later, and several mistakes later, I learned to tone it down a bit. I met a girl a while back who was also deeply afraid of intimacy. She used “trauma dumping,” tardiness, and flaking as a way to maintain her emotional walls.

Yet, I remember her telling me how much she “loved” how direct I was. I wasn’t fucking around when I dated her. If I wanted to see her, I’d let her know. I planned all the dates, all our phone conversations — everything.

I wasn’t coy about what I wanted.
I didn’t beat around the bush and ask for a commitment like a nervous teenager.

Instead of saying, “Oh can we be a ‘thing’?” I directly said to her face, “I want to have a relationship with you.”

This “relationship” lasted for a few weeks after that “relationship converstation” before she pulled away. I spent a long time thinking about her and this whole “relationship,” and I’m certain it was due to her fears of intimacy or commitment.

She loved how direct I was, but I didn’t get the same respect from her. Especially not during the phase when she slowly faded away and when she only offered vague excuses for why — and not even directly to my face.

It was like I wasn’t even deserving of the same honesty.

The internal struggle of your avoidant partner

Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.
― Eckhart Tolle

Emotionally absent, avoidant people do this because inside of them, there is an internal struggle.

For avoidants, vulnerability is like losing control for them. The thick, impenetrable walls they have built up over the years are not without reason — at least to them.

Somewhere, deep in the past, these people got hurt and the best defense they had was to shut people out. That was their only way to maintain control.

Unfortunately, in a relationship, you can’t have these impassable walls and have intimacy at the same time. To an avoidant person, opening up is a huge risk for them. They risk being judged, criticized or abandoned.

Their entire world is built around self-reliance and hyper-independence.

They want to be open, intimate, and vulnerable, but that’s too scary for them. Their partner’s openness mirrors their inability to share what’s truly on their mind.

They fear the unspoken expectation that if their partner is honest, open, and direct, they have to be the same way. Because these qualities require one to be “in touch” and accepting of one’s feelings to even be direct and honest, avoidants hate this.

They’re not going to willingly choose vulnerability.

Instead, they’ll choose to be overly nice and try to please others — especially their partner — to avoid the uncomfortable feelings associated with conflict or disagreement.

It’s easier to just sweep things under the rug and hope they go away.

In a more “spiritual or esoteric way,” we experience emotions on a certain frequency. Most people operate in lower vibrational states like shame, guilt, apathy, grief, or fear.

The longer you stay like this, the harder it is to escape it.

For example, if you’re always feeling afraid, that becomes your default emotional state.

And to climb out of that and be courageous in challenging moments (like relationship conflict) is far outside of their comfort zone.

Again, that feels like a loss of control.

Being open and direct challenges their default state. They’ll have to confront feelings and emotions they’re used to suppressing.

To mirror your vulnerability, honesty, intimacy, or “directness,” they can’t do this without disrupting their own internal emotional equilibrium.

Emotional avoidance is taxing in the long-term

Their fear of intimacy ultimately erodes relationships.

You can’t have one person carrying the weight of the emotional well-being of the relationship forever without getting burned out.

There were times in some of my previous relationships in which my girlfriends would knowingly give me silent treatment or create problems with their disrespectful comments.

And this always created “more work” on my end. Mostly in the few instances of silent treatment. I’d have to chase or “fish” for what their problem was, even though I knew their silent treatment was triggered by certain events.

Living like this is emotionally draining and toxic.

As time goes on all it does is destroy trust and intimacy. At some point, depending on how well of a bond you have with your partner, it will bend to the point of breaking.

How to communicate with avoidant partners

Having to deal with these behaviors while you’re doing your best to give what the relationship needs — honesty, commitment, openness, direct communication, etc… is emotionally taxing.

You shouldn’t live that way.

It’s unfulfilling, frustrating, and toxic.

And unless you become aware of the signs, you may continue to over-invest in people and repeat the same cycle over and over again.

There’s also the problem of internalizing. You might personalize their response, whether that’s shutting down, withdrawing, pulling away, or ghosting, as something fundamentally wrong with you.

But there’s nothing wrong with communicating honestly in a relationship.

That’s what you should be doing.

While you can’t change your avoidant partner, you can change your behavior. And you can change how you approach communication.

I had to accept when I told my ex, “I won’t be attending our wedding,” this was far too blunt and direct.

This hurt her. But what I also realized is that no matter what I did, what happened in our relationship was inevitable.

I could never change how she was going to respond to relationship conflict.

Her shutting down and pulling away was out of my control. It was all a ticking time bomb. For that relationship to have survived, she would have had to go through her own individual therapy and work on her own attachment issues to overcome her communication problems.

I would never recommend that you communicate in a way that invalidates or disregards your feelings. I’d even go as far as saying you shouldn’t be “nice.” Because niceness only invites more problems. People will take advantage of that.

You can be firm and direct without sounding like an asshole, and if they don’t like what you have to say, that’s their problem. Not yours.

If you suppress your feelings for your avoidant partner, you’re only further enabling them. They won’t grow or change without a bit of pressure from you. And if they can’t handle your honesty, they will filter themselves out of the relationship.

But you can communicate more appropriately.

For example, when one of my partners decided to avoid communicating the problem she had with me, and chose instead to give me the silent treatment, we had a little “heart-to-heart.”

I said, “Do not give me the silent treatment again, I will not tolerate that.”

That wasn’t a pleasant experience for me. Normally, I would have let something like this slide, but I was sick of abandoning myself for someone else’s sake.

I could have been rude and mean, but I stuck with what I value without letting my ego get out of control.

Did she truly listen to me and change? No, she did it again a few months later and I let her go, but the point isn’t to change someone else’s behavior.

It’s about sticking to your own limits and doing what’s best for you.

Why avoidants love and hate how you communicate

Avoidant partners have a love-hate relationship because they love that you will be open and honest with them — to a limited extent. To whatever they’re capable of handling.

They may love how much you tell them you adore or care about them, but if you step into unfamiliar territory where you try to confront issues with the relationship, that’s when they shut down.

They may love it when you lead and take initiative. But as soon as you bring up more commitment, they freeze like a deer in headlights and “peace out” because they can’t handle it.

You can’t change them.

Their avoidant behavior is deeply rooted in their psyche, and can only be healed through therapy, self-reflection, and personal growth.

But you can change your approach. You can revisit how you communicate and how you set limits with them.

Honesty with empathy and firmness reflects your own self-respect and does a pretty good job at filtering out the wrong partners when you’re dating.

You have the choice to lead and be open with them, but unless they reciprocate, you might have to let them go if that’s not happening.

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